Tourquai: A Novel

Tim Davys

Language: English

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: Feb 21, 2011

Description:

From Publishers Weekly

The pseudonymous Davys's third crime spoof to feature stuffed animals who behave just like humans (after Lanceheim) might have benefited from characters the reader can care more about as well as more humor. Insp. Falcon Ècu and his partner, Anna Lynx, accompany Mollisan Town's Supt. Larry Bloodhound to a crime scene in Tourquai, where Oswald Vulture's head has been sliced off and apparently carried away by the evildoer. If Larry and his team find the missing head of the deeply disliked "finance vulture," it can be reattached and Oswald resurrected. The pace picks up after Philip Mouse, a PI pal of Larry's, begins sniffing around in what becomes a standard police procedural. Plush suspects include Jake Golden Retriever, an art forger working for slippery gallery owner Igor Panda; eccentric inventor Oleg Earwig; Oswald's society wife, Irina Flamingo; and Oswald's mistress, Jasmine Squirrel; but the "killer" is an eye-winking surprise. (Mar.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

From

The Mollisan Town quartet, of which this is the third installment, is an uneven adventure. The basic conceit—that all the characters are stuffed animals—worked to wonderful effect in Amberville (2009), a mystery with metaphysical undertones. (Why would factories make stuffed animals when they’re destined to be destroyed?) But Lanceheim (2010) was a disappointment, a plodding religious allegory whose revelations were mundane. And now we have Tourquai, another mystery, in which a disliked, venture-capitalist vulture is beheaded while sitting at his desk. The police—Larry Bloodhound, Falcon Ècu, and Anna Lynx—try to determine who had the most to gain: sultry secretary Emanuelle Cobra, the mysterious Jasmine Squirrel, or Igor Panda, trafficker in forged paintings? There is still some pleasure in exploring the pseudonymous Davys’ world and pondering the peculiar biology of its denizens. But does using stuffed animals as characters make for a better book? In Amberville, it did. In Lanceheim, it didn’t disguise a lack of invention. And here it’s mere upholstery on a moderately satisfying mystery. One wonders, mildly, what’s in store for the finale, Yok. --Keir Graff